spinning
by the insane have strength
Summary: "He broke. Draco Malfoy was made of glass, and he had broken." Rated T for coarse language, violence, mentions of character death. Takes place during Deathly Hallows. Canon compliant.


**Title:** spinning

**Summary: **"He broke. Draco Malfoy was made of glass, and he had broken."

**Rating:** T for coarse language, violence, mentions of character death.

**Author:** Ebony (This Ebony Bird).

**Characters:** Draco Malfoy. Mentions of Harry Potter, Weasleys, Hermione Granger, Voldemort, Death Eaters, Hogwarts staff, Order of the Phoenix, Lavender Brown.

**Pairings: **Mentions of Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy.

**World:** Post-DH.

**Setting:** 1997. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Scotland.

**Genres:** Angst, Drama.

**Status:** Complete.

**Disclaimer: **I'm going to say this once and once only. Canon material is owned by Joanne K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), Arthur A. Levine Books (US), and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. This would not be FanFiction if I owned the Harry Potter franchise, so don't expect me to act like I do. Unless stated as otherwise, all original characters and plotlines are fictional. If there is any similarity to situations in other stories or real-life circumstances that you may recognize, it is purely coincidental. I tend to plagiarize my own ideas, so if you are familiar any of my other stories you may see parallels and crossovers with subjects matter such as languages, circumstances, et cetera.

* * *

Spinning. Round and round, circling. The world was spinning off of its axis, twisting everything into blurs of colour; melancholy shades that dripped and splattered across each other, like wet paint on an artist's canvas. Falling. Fall. Fell. Fall. Falling. Spinning, spinning spinning faster fast faster spinning spinning turning blur blur blur quickly reeling faster faster falling down down down dark drop faster spinning falling.

Draco Malfoy had to stop and catch his breath. It was like he had been thrown on a broom and launched into the most violent sort of hurricane, a tornado of wand light, curses and hexes and jinxes and charms and spells merging together to create one giant cyclone of angry black wind. He was falling without wings, sentenced to drown in the nothingness left behind by the storm. The world was breaking, cracked, shattered like a windowpane. The world was made of glass. And that was all he knew. There were pieces everywhere, fragments of glass that were so small that you needed a magnifying glass to even hope for a chance at seeing them. The fragments were littered everywhere, slicing at his feet like great claws. And the world was spinning. Oh, how it was spinning.

Images haunted him. Dead bodies everywhere; that of Charity Burbage, whose death he had only witnessed. When the Death Eaters had first brought her to Malfoy Manor, she had pleaded Draco's name, pleading for him to do the right thing and release her. But he couldn't have done anything even if he had wanted to. Wait, he hadn't wanted to? He hadn't wanted to help her? No, no, he had wanted to help her. He did. He didn't. He didn't know anymore. He was spinning on the Dark Lord's twisted merry-go-round and he didn't know when (if at all) it would stop.

There was another death that stuck in his mind. That one Gryffindor girl... what was her name again? She was named after some sort of plant. Lavender. Right. Lavender Brown. The one who snogged Weasley and had had Granger's panties in a metaphorical knot. She had been killed when the Death Eaters infiltrated Hogwarts —thanks to Draco— in his sixth year, under the cloaks of night, corruption, and secrecy. Lucky for Draco, he hadn't seen Brown's murder. While he had been coming down from the Astronomy tower, Aunt Bella had, with a wave of her wand, moved the couple of bodies that were in her path. One was a seventh-year that Draco had seen around but didn't know, and the other was Brown. It was hard to believe that that had only been a few months before, at the end of June.

Then there was Mad-Eye Moody, the toughened ex-Auror, ex-sort-of-Professor that Draco thought he had met in his fourth year. Draco was fortunate enough not to witness the death of this one brave man, but he still couldn't ignore it, because that one really loud Death Eater whose name had escaped him was always bragging about how she "shot the bastard off his broomstick" that strange night less than half a year ago.

Draco remembered something about Moody, some phrase adopted by Potter's gang, that they were always harping on about? Oh right. "Constant vigilance." Right. That. But didn't they understand? There was nothing constant anymore, there was only Draco spinning into oblivion, only able to catch glimpses of the the world around him. There was one glimpse clearer than others; a man falling off the Astronomy Tower, his lifeless body spinning down to the cold hard ground that awaited him.

Dumbledore.

Draco felt his entire body stiffen. It had only been months since he had threatened the life of his former Headmaster. But the daft old coot had been right after all; Draco wouldn't have killed him. He couldn't have.

He was weak. Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin Prince, was weak. A coward. A simple mirrored reflection of his father. Insubstantial. A ghost. He was not his own person, he was what he had been made. He was synthetic, fabricated, fake, a phony, a little boy dressing up in an old, once-majestic suit that didn't belong to him, didn't fit, and shoes that practically swallowed his feet whole. He was invisible.

'_There are other deaths too,' _he was reminded, other victims with names unknown to Draco, names that none of the Death Eaters knew. People with lives, with friends, families, lovers, stories to tell. And they were all dead. They had all disappeared from the face of the earth forever, and why? Because they were _different_? Because they were Muggles, Mudbloods, blood-traitors, unfit to live on the earth? '_Yes.'_ A voice in his head chimed. _'Because they were different, you killed them. You killed them all.'_ That was exactly why. That "why" had started an entire war. There was a war. A war was going on right this very second, and Draco was hiding away in the bathroom. Draco was hiding in the bathroom, and innocent people were dying because of petty differences; petty differences like blood.

No, no, blood was all that mattered. _'Yes.'_ A voice agreed, a different voice this time. Draco knew that voice all too well. Its monotonous slurs, each accented consonant. The smooth, silvery texture of the sounds mingling together and sounding pleasant to the common ear, but to Draco it sounded like the shrill scratching of fingernails on a chalkboard. Because that voice was unlike any other voice upon the earth. That voice belonged to his mentor, his teacher, his idol, his saviour, his abuser... his father. That voice belonged to Lucius Malfoy.

Lucius was right though, wasn't he? Blood _was_ all that mattered. It separated the worthy from the parasitic scum, didn't it? To be pure of blood left nothing to be desired, right?

_'Right.'_ His father's voice echoed again. Lucius' cold grey eyes appeared before Draco, enveloping him in their icy world and suffocating his vision, blurring the edges so that he was looking through twins orbs of frosted glass. The words from Lucius' tongue scratched at his throat, daring him to speak so that they could finally drag their talons across the soft tissue inside of him. _'You're a pureblood, Draco. You're on top. You're better.'_ To be pureblood was to be perfect. Pureblood and perfect. They were synonymous. Wasn't that what he had been taught, what _his father_ had taught him? It was.

Draco slumped down onto the cold tile floor of the bathroom. The lack of heat from the gleaming black marble tiles felt luxurious on his flushed skin. His black house robes lay discarded on the floor a few feet away, the green and silver Slytherin house badge grinned cheekily up at him, reminding the young man —no, he was still a boy. Just a young, naive boy— of his blood rights. Reminding him of all the ghosts he could not escape.

Dumbledore's trusting, weathered face as the two stood atop the Astronomy tower... Aunt Bellatrix's encouraging words slipping into the cavity of his ear like foul slimy snakes... his father's disappointed face as Draco broke the news to him that Harry Potter had bested him in Quidditch... the proud look on his mother's face as he stepped off the Hogwarts Express after his first year, the twelve-year-old recounting all the things he had accomplished that year... reminding him of his blood.

By the blood status laws, purebloods were superior to half-bloods, Mudbloods, and especially Muggles. Muggles, the creatures that were lower in status and intelligence than Flobberworms. Draco couldn't help but wonder briefly if this strange law was written down, or if it was just something developed socially. Was it right? Could it be —dare he think it— wrong?

Draco slowly moved into a sitting position, his vision abstracting the room around him. His head throbbed, pounding with fatigue, guilt, and not having eaten anything that day. For a fleeting second, Draco's stomach prodded him to consider going down to the feast. He forgot why he was holed up in the boys' bathroom on the fourth floor. He was soon to remember how he had come to the conclusion that being alone was better.

He couldn't face them, that's why. He couldn't face any of the. None of the students, not the teachers, not even his friends and allies. He wasn't ready to go back, knowing that there was no hope for him anymore, that every single body in that school feared him, despised him. Or those that knew that Draco Malfoy was a coward, that he had failed in his duty to kill a defenseless Albus Dumbledore. And those, like the youngest Weasley, Longbottom, and the rest of the "I Love Potter Club" that loathed him. The thought of all those people watching him, judging his every move, made him sick. So, so sick.

He straightened the collar of his white school shirt, it having rumpled quite a bit as he had grown more and more uncomfortable in it. He hated it. He hated it he hated it he hated it. Perhaps, he hated it simply because it was a uniform, yet another uniform that he had to wear. His whole life was uniforms, never leaving room for Draco to dress how he wanted to dress. He wanted to wear a pair of goddamn torn, faded blue jeans, a goddamn _Weird Sisters_ t-shirt, and a goddamn pair of ratty old sneakers. Was that too much to ask?

More than anything, Draco wanted to be a normal seventeen-year-old boy. He wanted to lounge around all day and listen to loud, angry music with inappropriate music and a thunder-like bass line. He wanted to sneak out at night with a gang of his coolest, edgiest friends and meet flirtatious girls in brightly-coloured provocative clothing that was too tight and ridiculously high heels. He wanted to kick around a ball with some buddies and drink the milk right out of the carton. He wanted to get scolded by his parents for swearing and putting his feet up on the table. He wanted to bring home a beautiful girl and make out with her on the chesterfield in his basement. He wanted to be normal more than anything in the world. But that would never happen. Not in this era, not this world. Never. Doomed to be extraordinary, was he? No, not extraordinary. Ordinary with extraordinary expectations.

That was enough to inspire feelings of nausea in Draco's body, and a chill ran through him, gripping his every nerve with its cold-as-snow fingers, clenching his throat tighter and tighter until he could not breathe. The Slytherin student could only sit and wait for the feeling possessing him to pass by, to leave him along and move on to its next victim.

When it disappeared, Draco was left feeling extremely tired, like he had run a thousand miles thousand miles without a chance for rest. His breath escaped quicker than usual; in small shallow gasps. His intake of breath was shorter than normal, leaving him begging for air. He couldn't get enough oxygen in his lungs and he was sure that he was going to die.

He was almost relieved that he was going to die, to bid the earth farewell. He didn't want to live on such a cold, unfeeling planet anymore. He wanted freedom. But mostly, Draco didn't want to fight anymore. He was done with pain, with killing and with the chaos of it all. He was done with everything.

_'You disappoint me, Draco.'_ His father's voice was back, reminding him of how worthless he was. Reminding him that he would never amount to anything. Reminding him of all that he had to do, and that he wouldn't do any of it, that he _couldn't_ do any of it. Reminding him that he couldn't forget all that he wanted to forget. Reminding him.

_'Draco, sweetie, it's alright. Everything's going to be okay. It's okay , sweetheart. Mum loves you.'_ Narcissa Malfoy's softened voice echoed in his head. He could almost feel her comforting hand on his shoulder on his shoulder. Almost.

His parents ghosts, spirits that would haunt him until the day he died. They would always be there, reminding of what kind of family he had been born into.

He stood up shakily, feeling like he had been hit by the Knight Bus. He gripped the side of sink to keep himself from falling back down and injuring himself. He considered, only for a moment, letting go and letting himself fall, breaking his body. He deserved it, after all, didn't he? He deserved to be hurt. He deserved to feel pain. He deserved to be the victim of the Cruciatus curse. He didn't deserve death, that was simply an easy way out. He deserved eternal torture punishment. He deserved all this and so much more; so much more than he could ever fathom, he was sure. He wanted to hurt, to know what that felt like. Because that would make him human.

But he had been hurt before.

Lucius Malfoy was a proud man, a proud man that would do anything to demolish any dishonour brought to his family. Whether it was his wife or his son that was out of line, he would stop them from bringing shame to the Malfoy family.

Draco remembered blood; so much blood. There was a young Draco crying on the floor over his shaking mother, looking up at his father with silver-grey eyes, eyes that had seen more than a child of seven deserved to see. Shadows and nightmares twirled and danced in front of his young eyes, visions he wished that he could unsee. His mother was crying, crying on the carpet and his father was just standing there, his face stoic and cold, unfeeling, proud. He wasn't helping her, why wasn't he helping her? She was hurt and he was just standing there. He was proud, so proud. Proud.

Draco took a look in the mirror, and immediately had to regain his balance. That wasn't his reflection staring back at him, it couldn't be. He wasn't as pale as the person in the mirror, the circles under his eyes not as dark. Draco wasn't nearly as thin and gaunt as the boy opposite him, who could almost be mistaken for a ghost. The face in the mirror was ashen, white with sickness and fear. His eyes were sunken in their sockets from lack of sleep due to he nightmare that kept him away every single night...

No, that wasn't him.

It couldn't be.

It couldn't be him.

It was.

"Who are you?" Draco whispered, staring down the other boy —no, no that was him— in the mirror, as if waiting for a response. No, that was him. Himself. It was staring down himself in the mirror. "Who am _I_?" He mused, a little bit louder. "Who am I?" His voice was raspy, but had returned to a normal speaking volume. Draco closed his eyes tightly, wishing the world away, the pressure he generated from his closed eyelids, creating familiar coloured patches in the darkness that he had created for himself.

He didn't know who he was, he was lost. He was lost, unwanted, invisible. He didn't have a name, not a title, he was just a nameless pawn in a warped game of Wizard's Chess, being overtaken by knights and queens and rooks and kings and bishops and other pawns. He was useless, but was used. He was nameless.

Suddenly, his eyes shot open, and his silver gaze collided with that of his reflection. "Who am I?!" He cried desperately, begging his reflection for an answer, some sort of little white lie that would shelter him from everything, or a crystal of truth in this dim cave of the Dark Lord's world. No, not a world; a game. A game. Nothing more than a game.

"Who am I?" Draco repeated, his eyes welling with tears. Tears for all the abuse that his father doled out like biscuits to a trained dog, tears for the mourning families of the victims of the Death Eaters, tears for the choices he had made and the choices that he was going to be forced to make. Tears for the ones who could not cry and to add to the tears of those who could. Tears. Falling. Spinning.

As tears streamed down his pointed face, a monster growled inside of him. Everything was wrong, it was all wrong. His father was wrong, his mother was wrong, Snape was wrong, the Dark Lord was wrong, Harry Potter was wrong, Dumbledore was wrong, the prophecy was wrong, Aunt Bella was wrong, Granger and Weasley were wrong, the world was wrong, Draco was wrong. It was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Who am I?!" He cried again. "WHO THE FUCK AM I?!"

The monster in the pit of his stomach was creating a riot. His insides were screaming at him in anger. Screaming at him because he didn't know how to make things better, because he didn't know why exactly he was crying. Because he didn't know what was wrong with him and why he couldn't pull himself together and just do something!

Because he was weak. Because he was a failure. There was no reason for him to have forgotten that, when he was reminded of his unsuccessful life and all the things he had failed to do. He was a failure. Draco Malfoy was a disgrace to the great Malfoy name. He had only brought shame, humiliation, and scorn to the proud family. He shouldn't have been born.

He shouldn't have been born.

He... shouldn't have been... born?

The world was better off without him. Everyone was better off without him. Everyone would be better if he just crawled away into his snake-hole and died. Nobody wanted him. Who would want a washed-up prince that didn't know how to make friends, only enemies?

Who was he? He was a mere shell of a man, a ghost without a home. He was lost and forgotten, unknown and unwanted. Forbidden from being fully appreciated and accepted into the environment. He was homeless; doomed to walk the world forever and witness what he could not share but might have shared in another life. He was a shadow; slipping in and out of the room, standing there in the back and watching, but unseen. Unwanted. Lost.

He felt like he was breaking, like he was a mirror reflection the world around him and someone had swung at him with an ice pick, damaging the surface for good. He was breakable, but he had to pretend that he wasn't. He had to pretend that he was invincible. He would not let anyone see the cracked glass over top of his skin. He would not let anybody penetrate his intricately designed, bulletproof mask.

It was impossible for him to get a grip on himself, not now, not this time. He was going to burn away into ashes if he didn't do something soon. He was doomed, damned, condemned. He was a prisoner of his own mind, an inmate of his own personal Hell. Draco was dancing with the devil, with Satan himself. He was trapped in this dismal world without a plan for escape. There was not hope for him, not anymore. Not after the choices he had made. He was running out of hope, he was growing emptier and emptier by the second. There was no stopping it, it was going to give him the worst he had ever gotten. For he was a coward, and cowards do not prosper: they suffer. They suffer more than any other kind of demon in the universe, for the coward must live with what they have done, no matter what the consequence. Draco was not ready for consequences. He was only a boy, pretending to be a man. He was lost, confused, abandoned. There was nothing for him, not before and not today. He had nothing, absolutely nothing. No family, no friends, not even an enemy. He was invisible, unwanted, useless.

If he had been born into a different family, would that have made a different? If he had been born a —dare he think it— Weasley (but still somehow able to keep his blonde locks, rather than that obnoxious ginger), would he still be the same insufferable git that the entirety of the student body would sun the next time he showed his face? Or would he be accepted into the arms of the others, no longer friendless or loveless? Would he be an addition to the Golden Trio? Would he be... normal?

It didn't matter, because Draco would never be that boy, nor would he ever be accepted, be loved. Nobody could ever care for somebody as cowardly as he. He had to face the truth; nobody would ever love him. Draco Malfoy was fated to walk the world alone for the entirety of his life. Never knowing the touch of another, never to kiss the lips of a girl he loved. Never to be anybody but the coward he was. Is? Was? Is.

_'You'll never amount to anything... coward.'_ A different voice in his head taunted. The voice was familiar, it had to be, but he could not put his finger to it. The voice was definitely female, and there was a distinct aura of concern. Draco knew it must be a girl he knew, one who must have said this to him. He did not hear voices, he knew that. He was not crazy. He was many things, but crazy was not one of them.

If anything was crazy, it was the world. The world that had been flipped upside-down and stirred around like a potion that Professor Slughorn had instructed the seventh-years to make. There were many ingredients, and the potion itself was complicated. And that was how the world spun on its axis.

Draco felt the familiar monster inside of him rear its fiery head and bite down hard on his heart. _'Nobody could ever love you.'_ It snarled at him, teasing him with the fact that he would never find love, that he would never know compassion or true feeling. It was dangling the familiar glimmer of truth in front of him; that he was alone. Draco Malfoy was completely alone.

He broke. Draco Malfoy was made of glass, and he had broken.

The monster smiled smugly as it witnessed the damage it had done. Draco cried out in frustration and fury, rearing up his fists and bringing them down hard on the mirror in front of him. He froze as he realized what he had done. He had lost control of himself. That couldn't happen. It he couldn't control his own emotions, what hope was he? None. None at all. If he couldn't even control himself, then what could he possibly control? Nothing. Just, nothing.

Draco let out a shaking breath as he looked back at his reflection. The impact from his fists had warped the Draco in the mirror, the cracks distorting him into some sort of sad, hideous creature. He looked forlorn and defeated, he looked nothing like a prince or even a man. He was a monster in himself, unable to hide that which he had created. He had raised a demon. Or, had he been raised _as_ a demon? Was it his fault that he was this way: insecure and forgotten, cruel and uncontrollable? Was there anyone else to blame other than himself?

Could it be that his father was to blame? Was Lucius Malfoy to blame?

Was it all the abuse that Lucius had put him through that had signed his fate to make him end up where he was: in a bathroom hiding away from the rest of the world?

Or was Draco just destined to be a lowly coward? Destined to be a puppet, never the puppeteer, never holding the strings. Never in control of the world. Any power he had was a simple delusion, fabricated by his mind to prove to himself that he was larger than life. It was all a facade, a child's game. It was all fake.

Draco looked down at his hands, finally noticing the beads of crimson blood on his hands caused by the impact against the mirror. There were shards of glass in the sink, and Draco just looked down at them absentmindedly, like he was seeing them without seeing them.

As if controlled by the Imperius curse, he lifted one hand to twist the faucet, which caused a gently stream of water to pour from the mouth of the tap, the clear liquid enticing and seductive to the stinging in his hands. Draco placed his pale hands under the water, watching as the blood was washed from the miniscule wounds and the water pooling in the sink adopted a coloured tinge: the colour of blood. His blood. Blood that looked like the blood from every single person on the earth.

Muggle.

Mudblood.

Half-blood.

Pureblood.

Draco's blood, Potter's blood, the Dark Lord's blood... it all looked the same.

It all... looked the same.

Draco bent down to pick up his wand that lay abandoned on the floor. The springy length of hawthorn felt unnatural in his hand, like it didn't belong to him anymore, like it was using him and he was using it merely because they both desperately needed to be used. It was like there was another wand that was destined to be his, like Draco was no longer the master of his hawthorn and unicorn hair wand.

He could not master the wand.

He could not master himself.

With a sigh and a flick of his wrist, Draco pointed the wand at the mirror and could only whisper the spell. A shaky "Reparo," escaped his lips, and a few of the cracks disappeared from the mirror, blending the broken pieces together. His brow furrowed, and he cleared his throat. "Reparo," he repeated, this time his voice was slightly steadier, the shake was not as noticeable and he was slightly less absentminded. Again, only a few of the pieces rejoined, none of those from inside the sink flew up to meet the main body of the mirror.

Draco let out an irritated breath. "Reparo!" He yelled aggressively, practically beating the air in front of the mirror with his wand. The bloody pieces remaining in the sink flew so violently towards the mirror that once they collided with the main glass, they chipped and smashed, a small glimmering piece falling and slicing the back of Draco's wand hand open before falling triumphantly to the sink, where it split into three shards.

"Fuck," was the only thing that Draco could say. A frown upon his face, he touched his wand top gently to the back of his hand and muttered a small spell that Snape had taught him. He watched as the wound closed with a small hiss and a slight, soft burning on his hand. He pointed the wand at his free hand, murmuring the same spell and supervising as the microscopic cuts closed and the stinging sensation disappeared. He did the same to his other hand —this time to the palm of it— and stepped back from the mirror. He pointed his wand at his hair, and opened his mouth to speak an oh-so-familiar spell, one that would neaten his hair and give him a professional sort of air. But no sound escaped from his lips other than a sort of strangled breath. Draco cleared his throat, and tried again. "Constituo." He spoke clearly this time, and his hair immediately tamed itself, loose hair settling into place and the shine returning to his short blonde locks. Draco sighed heavily and pointed his wand at his clothes, speaking the same spell as before. His collar immediately straightened itself out, and the wrinkles in his shirt and trousers soon disappeared.

He bent down to his robes and swung the black fabric over his shoulders, slipping his arms through the sleeves. He looked back at himself in the mirror, and pointed his wand at the glass, saying the repairing spell once more in a calm, clear voice. This time the fragments jumped effortlessly to the rest of the glass, even cleaning themselves of blood and shining the entire piece once all the cracks had been repaired.

He looked at himself one last time in the mirror, splashing his face with water from the still-running faucet. He dried his hands and face with one of the towels purposefully left out by the house-elves, and turned on his heel, walking confidently out of the bathroom. The feast would be over by now, the new students would be sorted, and amidst all the chaos Draco would be able to slip into his dormitory, unseen by unwanted pairs of eyes. Where he could really be alone, where he could dream of a world away from this one. One without all the despair and struggles, replaced with harmony and acceptance.

Draco's mind had to take a short pause. Did he really want a peaceful world? He could not rule a peaceful world, there was not power in a peaceful world. There were none of the things that he was used to. There was no superiority or inferiority, no anger, no dread, no abandonment, not abuse. One could not be a prince in a peaceful world, could not reign, could not be brave, not be a coward. There was no hatred, no conceit, no pride. In other words, there was nothing for Draco there, nothing. Blood didn't matter, and so there was nothing. Just... nothing. Nothing for a boy such as he. Not a single bloody thing.

Nothing.

The blonde boy slipped down the stairs, avoiding the eyes of all. He was not seen, nor did he wish to be seen. He was content in his anonymity, content to be free from all the stares and the judgments that bore into him, sitting upon his shoulders like mountains of disappointment and cruel laughter. They were all laughing at him, every single one of them. Not laughing aloud, for none would dare mock or ridicule a man so close to the Dark Lord himself, not one with the reputation of Draco Malfoy's.

When he finally reached the dungeons Draco let out a sigh of relief, merging with the shadows of the dark corridors. He flipped the hood of his robes over his head, obscuring his face from those that might pass by and recognize him.

He could not have that: he could _not_ be recognized.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Draco collided with something. "Oi! Watch where you're going!" The voice was high-pitched, definitely female, and a moderate Scottish accent tainted it from being pure and perfect King's English. Draco raised his eyes —which had been trained to the stone floor— and one of his pale eyebrows pricked up at the sight of his peer. "I said, 'Watch where the fuck you're going next time'. Are you bloody _deaf_?" She was talking to him again. Draco scoffed and pushed past her, eager to get to the safety and comfort of his bed. "Fucking prick!" The nameless girl called after him.

Draco smirked inwardly. Here she was, insulting him and swearing like a sailor at him and being all tough, but it she knew who he was then she would be sure to apologize and grovel for his forgiveness and probably offer him sexual favours —which he would decline. She would do all these things because _no one _insulted Draco Malfoy and got away with it. "Fuckin' idiot..." He heard her mutter as he drew farther and farther away.

Draco easily made the rest of the journey into the common room, being acknowledged only by Pansy Parkinson, who must have been distraught looking for him after they got off the train. She was a nice girl, she really was, and her heart was in the right place. She deserved a nice guy whose heart was in the right place, a bloke who could give her the love that she wanted and deserved. Draco could not be that man.

When he finally collapsed into bed minutes later, his head was spinning once again. Spinning, reeling, his world was turning in circles before him. Falling around him. Falling, falling, falling.

Spinning.


End file.
